San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

A Twofer: Carbon Tax Solves Both Climate Change and Plastic Ocean Pollution

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For more than half a century, cheaply-priced fossil fuels have come to define the American dream. We travel freely in gasoline powered vehicles and rely on coal, oil and natural gas for heating, cooling and operating electrical devices.

In addition, everything possible is now fashioned from plastic polymers derived from petroleum or natural gas. We’ve abandoned the “reuse and repair it” mindset of the pre-WWII era and embraced instead a “throw away” plastic consumer culture.

The most urgent environmental crises today are undeniably global climate change and the buildup of plastic waste in the world’s oceans. Both are harmful externalities of the fossil fuel industry: impacts, like pollution, not reflected in the cost of the products but paid for instead by some third party.

In this case, the third party is the global public that suffers the health and monetary consequences of both climate change and ocean plastic pollution.   [Read more…]

Dr. Billionaire, Meet Dr. Salk

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Can we conquer disease without concentrating wealth in a precious few pockets? Not-so-distant history offers a clear and encouraging answer.

By Sam Pizzigati / Inequality.Org

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong has helped make a little medical history. The good doctor holds over 95 patents. He pulled off the first pig-to-human cell transplant to treat diabetes. And one of the drugs he designed and developed, Abraxane, keeps cancerous cells from dividing.

How much of a personal reward does Dr. Soon-Shiong merit for contributions like these? No one, of course, can definitively say. How much in personal rewards has Dr. Soon-Shiong actually collected over the course of his medical career? That figure we can pin down. Dr. Soon-Shiong, the wealth trackers at Bloomberg tell us, has amassed a personal fortune worth $9.7 billion. And plenty more is coming.

Dr. Soon-Shiong currently serves as the CEO of NantKwest, a San Diego cancer research firm. The pay deal he cut last year, we’ve just learned from required filings, will bring him at least $148 million for his CEO labors — and maybe as much as $330 million.   [Read more…]

Looking Back at the Week: May 1-7

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This week’s edition of Looking Back at the Week features articles, commentaries, columns, toons, and other work by San Diego Free Press regulars, irregulars, columnists, at-large contributors, and sourced writers on: Cali’s sinking GOP, Papa Doug’s D3 donation, Superior Court judges, getting sandbagged by SANDAG, SD’s crisis of compassion, the Mayor not caring, illumination, May Day, the Supes MMJ moratorium, UCSD’s racial climate, Puerto Rico, CV’s Millenia Project, affordable housing, transportation justice, making Earth Day everyday and lots of other inspiring (and sometimes depressing), grassroots news & progressive views from San Diego’s friendly, neighborhood, all volunteer, slightly funky, community news site.   [Read more…]

Wild and Wooly

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By Sloanranger

Well here it is, wild and wooly. We thought it was already crazy — obstructional, destructional — dysfunctional to the ‘nth degree. Tea parties, three parties — and the mob finally playing their Trump card. But no trustbusters, not yet – maybe because the trust of the people had long gone, anyway.

Nuclear options, up and down votes, heck, just stop everything. And inside the beltway, the people’s business — or rather lack of it, went on as usual. Our representatives listening only to lobbyists and extremists, corporate paid pundits and media, not much was said about us…to us or for us.   [Read more…]

Geo-Poetic Spaces: Illumination

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Imagine
landing sick in a country
where pharmacists
refer to themselves as chemists
measure medications
with their own hands
call customers by name   [Read more…]

Raise the Wage Super Walk, OB Residents Organizing for Rent Control

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Weekly Progressive Calendar: Upcoming in San Diego

Believe it or not, mail-in ballots for the June 7th primary will be arriving this coming week. This week’s events include door-to-door canvassing in support of the referendum raising the minimum wage in San Diego and a meeting to organize a rent control rally in Ocean Beach.

So I’m gonna try an experiment for the next few weeks and limit my Friday column to upcoming events. We’d like to see them get more attention –because we support progressive activism everywhere– and I need the time to crank out primary election stories for the coming week.

Get your event listed: I try to list the next 10 days or so of mostly non-commercial events I think our readers might find of interest. I source my material from social media listings and press releases. In cases where there are competing but similar events or campaigns of the progressive persuasion, I do my best to list everything.   [Read more…]

Door Between U.S. and Mexico Opened …

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… Russian National Dies In Otay Dentention Facility, and More Trouble For South Bay School Officials

Border Patrol allied with Border Angels–a non-profit organization that advocates for humane immigration reform–and opened the door at the U.S.-Mexican border in Friendship Park. This is the third time Border Patrol has allowed it.

Gabi Esparza was able to reunite with her mother for three minutes by the door. Esparza lives in the United States while her mother is waiting to enter the U.S. They hadn’t been face-to-face in nine years. (CNN Money)   [Read more…]

Men’s Awful Tweets To Women Sportscasters Sparks #MoreThanMean

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“One of the players should beat you to death with their hockey stick like the whore you are.”

By Abby Zimet / Common Dreams

In an often hateful and misogynistic culture, there’s likely not much worse than the mindless, profane, violent venom regularly spewed at women sportscasters by male online bullies with issues they clearly haven’t addressed and keyboards they clearly feel they can hide behind so they don’t have to.

Having had enough, two Chicago-based female sports journalists launched #MoreThanMean, a stunningly pointed and pained PSA wherein discomfited regular guys — not the Tweets’ authors and mostly friends of the video’s producers — read actual Tweets out loud to them.   [Read more…]

Superior Court Judges Averse to Open Seat Contests

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Nobody cares much about judicial electoral contests. And apparently the current batch of judges in Superior Court would like to keep it that way. At least that was the conclusion I drew after talking with more than a dozen local attorneys and prosecutors.

The 2012 judicial elections, where birther lawyer Gary Kreep upset Deputy District Attorney Garland Peed, were a national embarrassment. Since that time, “open seat” judicial contests have all but vanished in San Diego.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Crisis of Compassion: Scorn, Indifference Don’t Solve Homelessness

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It doesn’t take the recently released Point in Time Count report to know that the number of unsheltered people in downtown San Diego is exploding. Seeing every vacant lot encircled with blue tent and tarp encampments propped against chain-link fencing, has ceased to evoke alarm. It’s now the norm.

Last week, homeless advocates, including myself, confronted the mayor for authorizing installation of a $57,000 rock bed under an overpass where homeless people frequently camped. On social media, we were accused of being bleeding hearts who were giving aid and comfort to creatures who don’t deserve our concern. They called the ugly barrier that was built without a shred of effort to be attractive, a “rock garden”! When one of our group spoke at City Council about the inhumanity of using pest-control tactics to repel human beings, two councilpersons actually giggled!

When did we get to be so heartless and mean? When did it become acceptable to scorn those who are less fortunate and mock those who are compassionate?   [Read more…]

Transportation Justice for San Diego: Our Message From the Start

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By Environmental Health Coalition

A recent KPBS article reports that The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), the organization responsible for planning the transportation in San Diego County, spent close to $1.5 million on a publicity strategy for the regional transportation plan.

The plan, passed last October, put freeways before people, ignoring recurring community requests for improved transit, biking and walking infrastructure before expanding freeways.

The article exposed SANDAG’s developing media talking points to support the regional transportation plan; talking points that made the plan sound like a good option for our communities.

In reality, the plan is not a good option for our communities, and no media strategy or talking point covers this up.

Today, the truth remains the same: The regional transportation plan does not meet the community’s needs, and it is not a good plan to improve the public health, safety and sustainability of the San Diego region.   [Read more…]

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